Best way to break camps with SK?

[Barnabas]

Hey guys,

You may know me from my previous post about struggling with SK Feign Death. I think I have most of it figured out now.

Next question, if you don't mind. How do you guys break camps and obtain solo pulls when they're all social. Unfortunately for me as a level 43 SK, my snare is also a DoT, which keeps ticking and socializes the other mobs returning to their reset point at regular foot speed.

What are some ways you guys break camps with SKs to get solo mobs?

Thanks,
Avicious

[ScaringChildren]

You'll probably have to wait until the other mobs fully reset before trying to snag the snared mob.

[Kesselring]

Using line of sight is one easy way. Indoor zones everything is line of sight. Think of each mob having like an aura of aggro that is blocked by walls/objects indoors.

[Danth]

Shadow Knight pulling is pretty straightforward, albeit not particularly speedy. Snare the one you want out of pack. Let them all come out. Make sure the snared mob moves outside social aggro range from the camp's default location (whether due to distance, line of sight, whatever). Feign. Let all non-snared mobs return back to spawn. Stand. Your own target, now split, will continue pursuing you alone.

Make sure you're using Engulfing Darkness or better. Clinging Darkness does not slow monsters enough to keep them parked.

More advanced tactics involve things such as using Fear to split pesky monsters out of a pack, such as casters who might break your feign, or using your pet for initial aggro for a variety of reasons.

Danth

[Legidias]

Get a bio orb

[Servant]

Another way to do this is to game the walk timer -

After you pull mobs out and then fd, each of them has a random walk timer. Once it expires, each individual mob walks back towards its spawn. The timer is only reset once the mob reaches the spawn, so what you can do is pull the pack out, fd, wait until the first mob resets, then stand back up. They'll all social and come running back to you. FD again, and only the one that reset will have a walk timer, the rest go walking back immediately - voila, they're split!

[NegaStoat]

Assuming it's an outdoor camp and none of my targets are casters, I pull at max distance with my runed oak bow using cheaply crafted flight arrows and run away a short distance, then hit my target with a darkness / click shrunken skull earring / feign death combo. The idea is to allow the social mobs that I don't want to have plenty of space to walk back to their spawn points so they are simply not near enough to care about the snared target that is stuck in place and taking damage.

A good example of this setup would be the Misty Thicket wall guards. I have plenty of room to keep things safe.

[Barnabas]

You guys rock. Thank you again for your time and advice!

[Tethler]

Another way to do this is to game the walk timer -

After you pull mobs out and then fd, each of them has a random walk timer. Once it expires, each individual mob walks back towards its spawn. The timer is only reset once the mob reaches the spawn, so what you can do is pull the pack out, fd, wait until the first mob resets, then stand back up. They'll all social and come running back to you. FD again, and only the one that reset will have a walk timer, the rest go walking back immediately - voila, they're split!

Thanks for this post. I knew there was some mechanic with how mobs sometimes waited and sometimes don't, but I didn't know exactly how it worked.

[San'Drax]

Hasn't been mentioned, but don't overlook - undead lull spells.

[Freakish]

Depending how many resources you want to use. You can also FD, send a pet in and back it off back to you before it dies. Mobs will aggro and kill pet without you ever gaining aggro. Then you stand and peel. Or use stalking probes / elder beads in the same way. Eye of zomm is a level 1 pet so your aggro range will be huge with it.

[stebbins99]

Freakish, that is some awesome advice regarding "backing off the pet"-- good stuff.
Though I play a necro (rather than SK), I love to function as the puller.

While a necro pet is less "disposable" than an SK pet, breaking a camp up (initially) is certainly worth an extra pair of bone chips or two.

In my experience, the safest-yet-slowest approach for splitting mobs/camps is using the darkness snare coupled with FD. It definitely requires some pulling distance and won't work in most dungeons. The counter-intuitive thing about this approach is that we are snaring (ie slowing down) the very mob we're trying to separate from the camp, hence the need for some pulling distance

[Servant]

No problem at all, Tethler. Snare pulling has its place, but I think walk-timer pulling is safer, especially in cramped quarters - you don't have to risk having the pack catch you while you're waiting for the snared mob to be far enough away from its spawn before you fd. It has certain disadvantages (+1 mob if your fd fails since nothing's snared, and you can't pick your pull order, you just get whichever mob randomly reset first) but it's a great tool in a puller's arsenal :)